


Sit tight, it'll be over soon

by PlushPyth



Category: Bastion
Genre: Bastion spoilers, Gen, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 11:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3808738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlushPyth/pseuds/PlushPyth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bastion AU where the one to remember the most after each Restoration is Zia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sit tight, it'll be over soon

"Caelondia, we're coming home!" 

Rucks faces absolution with trembling fingers and a wide grin. Regret had brought him here. A chance to fix everything, to undo the horrors both action and inaction had wrought. 

Kid doesn't say a word, but that's not unusual, even barring current circumstances. He fumbles for something and pulls out the crystal barrette found abandoned on the Rippling Walls. Kid turns it over in his hands, once, twice, committing it to memory.  He’ll have his chance to see the girl whom it belonged to, alive and well. 

Zia stares at the green light and finds the will to not look at herself fading away. She wonders if Zulf could feel this too, in his unconscious state, this ebbing away of their existence. She only remembers at the final moment, as her grip on reality hangs by a thread, that she's experienced this feeling before.

Zia lets out a sob as her body fades to green.

* * *

It's always at that one point, that she remembers everything. Through each iteration, she can only remember each previous loop at the last moment. It's a punch in the gut each time and she thinks it so so useless. Replaying the same events over and over, and only remembering at the end that they must do so again. 

Kid arrives, kid leaves, Zulf leaves, Kid leaves, comes back. Kid brings back a pet sometimes, sometimes he doesn't, it doesn't matter, really. She sits and hums as Rucks fills in the blanks of a story she's already heard but doesn’t remember. 

Kid comes back with Zulf in tow. 

Nothing ever changed and as she blinked out of existence yet again all Zia could feel was a horrid gnawing bitterness. 

* * *

She isn't prepared for the memories to flood back earlier. By all accounts, this iteration had been the exact same as the last one. Same as always, kid left, kid came back, she sits by Ruck’s side as he tells his story. 

Kid comes back, dragging a massive battering ram, and Zia can't shake the feeling that this is wrong, somehow. She asks where Zulf is. He passes her without a sound and lets the battering ram fall from his grip. Zia expected to hear an agitated caw from the pecker before remembering what Rucks had said on her return to the Bastion.

_Our little pecker...didn’t make it._ _Our little squirt...didn’t make it._

_Our little Zulf didn’t make it._

None of the animals had made it, and now they were all standing at the finish line with yet another tally missing from their headcount. Zia felt horribly horribly wrong. 

She repeats her question and Kid refuses to make eye contact. He mumbles "Didn’t make it." and she almost hears it in Rucks’ voice. Kid turns from her and places the final shard in the monument and everything feels wrong wrong wrong. There's tension building in her shoulders and her mind races as she watches Kid begin his descent into the heart of the Bastion. If she thought hard enough, she could find an answer. This wrongness was more than Kid leaving Zulf behind to die, there was more to this feeling than that. More than the death of the ankelegator and more than Rucks' guilt and more than her father playing a part in the entire fucking world ending. 

It didn't happen this way last time. 

She barely registers any confusion at what “last time” means before it hits her like a ton of bricks, and it's like the Calamity all over again. When her head stops spinning she finds Kid gone, gone to Rucks and gone to start this all over again. 

Just as well. Zia sits on the discarded battering ram. It would be cruel to evacuate the Bastion with a hunk of metal in place of Zulf. What had changed this time? Did the Kid remember something? He gave no indication of it. 

Not that the answers to those questions matter now. The Bastion comes alive, green light flooding the sky. 

Zia closes her eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> ahha this is super short i'll work on more later (peace sign)


End file.
